Gene Wolfe: The Wizard

“Would you kill me for it? Now?”

I shook my head.

“My children, sir, and my wife. They haven’t had a thing to eat. Not today, and not yesterday neither. If you’ll give something, sir, anything we can eat, and tell us what cattle’s yours? I’d never bother one head of yours. Never again.” He looked up at me hopefully.

“Who has your herd?”

“Them from across the mountains. I won’t never touch a animal of yours nor fight your herders. By wind and grass!”

“If I give you something now. Something to eat.”

He fell to his knees again, hands outstretched. I doubt that he had begged before; certainly he knew little about it.

I made him rise. “Tell your wife and children to come out. I won’t hurt them and I want to see them.”

She was tall and graceful, darker than he; her eyes were the sky at moonrise. Their boys were about four and five.

“I don’t have food,” I told him, “but I can see you get plenty if you’ll earn it. There’s a knight behind me. Do you know what a knight is?”

He nodded, a little hesitantly.

“A man like me, with a painted shield. His has leopards on it. Tell him you’ve talked to me, to Sir Able.”

The woman said, “Sir Able.”

“Right. Make him the promise you offered me. Tell him you’ll fight the men from over the mountains with us if he’ll feed you and your family and give you weapons.”

He grinned and rubbed his hands.

“They’re close behind us, Sir Able,” his wife said.

I promised her that she and her children would be safe with us if her husband fought for us.

We met the first at noon, a small group I thought was a patrol. Cloud charged, and I made good use of a new string while wishing I had Parka’s. They scattered, we topped a ridge and saw the advance guard of the Host of Osterland—a hundred horsemen, a horde of famished spearmen, and two elephants. Cloud impaled an elephant and tossed it, men and weapons scattering the way water scatters from a trout. The other fled, and we returned to our own advance guard and sent a man to warn Arnthor that the enemy was at hand.

There was a brisk fight that afternoon. The open, arid desert is perfect for cavalry, but the Knight of the Leopards and I had few horses, and those we had were not in the best condition. The Caan’s horsemen flanked us, charging our shield-wall and nearly breaking it, scattering when I charged from between our ranks and re-forming behind their infantry. Our bowmen made good practice, and each charge cost men and horses. When the last had been repelled, their infantry showered us with sling-stones. We advanced and were met with the kind of wild attack we had come to know so well.

The Knight of the Leopards and I fought on foot before the shieldwall, and though the questing blade Baki had found for me was not Eterne, it drank blood to its hilt, drawing me step by step in search of the life it was destined to end.

“I tried to keep pace with you,” the Knight of Leopards said afterward, “and so did the men. They could keep up with me, but not with you.”

“I was scarcely able to keep up with my own sword.”

He laughed. “But you were Able. How’s Gylf?”

“He’ll live, I’m sure, if we can keep him from fighting ‘til he’s well. Wistan’s with him, and I’ll sleep by him.”

“You thought he couldn’t be hurt.” It was said soberly, and was not a question.

“Yes,” I said. “I suppose I did.”

“Anyone can be hurt— anyone. That includes you.”

“I’ve learned I can be killed.”

To tell the truth—and I have tried throughout this whole account to tell you the truth, Ben, as I knew it at the time—I expected an attack that night. The Osterlings, I thought, would be eager to bring us to battle. In this I was misled by my ignorance of the early stages of the war and the battle on the wooded slopes of the Mountains of the Sun that came after. I had not experienced it as the Caan had.

Osterland had been beaten by Celidon (decisively, it no doubt seemed) at Five Fates, the battle that had cost him his father and brothers and made him Caan. He had regrouped, beaten Celidon at the passes, and pressed on, his army gorged on flesh and ready for battle on any terms—a battle he must have felt sure would be the last.

The result had been the Forest Fight, over which neither he nor Arnthor had exercised control. He had won in the end; but his camp had been sacked, and the war that seemed nearly over had become a long struggle. He had outflanked Arnthor and taken Kingsdoom and Thortower, had sacked them both and butchered thousands, and so regained the prestige he had lost in the Forest Fight; but Arnthor had refused battle again and again. Driven south, then west, then south again, Arnthor had yielded the Mountain of Fire, retaken it, yielded it again at my urging, retreated, and now returned renewed, proving a dangerous and persevering enemy. A night attack might have become the sort of uncontrollable clash the Forest Fight had been; and even if Osterland prevailed, a night attack would be more apt to disperse than to destroy us.

None of which I knew when I lay listening to Gylf’s labored breaths and wondering whether I had cleaned his wound well enough. Knowing that even if I had, he might die.

“Able?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I’m right here.”

“Ears up.”

“Are they coming?” I sat up. Some strident insect was singing. Much farther away, sentries bawled the numbers of their posts to prove they were awake and in position. Cloud slept; her dreams were of elephants and starry meadows.

“Ears up,” Gylf repeated.

“What is it?” I asked him; Uns stirred in his sleep.

“Master,” Gylf muttered. “He walks.”

The insect had ceased buzzing, and the sentries fallen silent. No wind disturbed the dry brush or moaned among the naked rocks; and in that charmed silence I came to understand that Gylf was right. Someone far bigger than Heimir—someone far bigger than Schildstarr—had left the seat from which his single eye beheld Skai and Mythgarthr. His ravens flew before him, and their all-seeing eyes were his. His wolves trotted at his heels, winding the blood that had not yet dyed the Greenflood. I shivered with fear, and drew my cloak about me. Gylf slept, but it was hours before I did.

I dreamed of the Caan’s sea rovers; my mind was full of them when I woke. The brave blood runs first, we say, and mean that someone who has taken a wound never fights boldly again. No doubt there is truth in it, as in many sayings; but I have never found it a good guide. The older a man is, the more cautious he is apt to be, but that is true whether he has been wounded or not; and it was slaughtering so many enemies, not wounds, that had sobered Woddet.

How did it feel to be a man as large and as strong as he, and to lie with a woman half again your size, a woman who could snap pike shafts? How did it feel, for that matter, to lie with any woman? Disiri had been human—or humanlike—for me so long ago.

Seeking any distraction, I rose and donned the old helm. Gylf was a sleeping beast far mightier than he had appeared, but wounded still; no strength was left in the jaws that had shaken men like rats.

Next day we advanced in good order, reaching the river at midmorning. The Host of Osterland was massed along the north bank. I sent a messenger to report it, and he returned (as I expected) with a summons from Arnthor.

The Royal Pavilion had been set up by the time I reached the rear; Beel and the three dukes were seated inside, with Stonebowl, Gaynor, Morcaine, and Smiler. Arnthor himself presided, wrapped in his purple cloak. I had not expected the women, although I tried not to show it when I knelt and was invited to rise and claim a chair.